The DC insider and founder of the nonprofit Rebecca Project used her pull to pass a federal mandate in record time protecting the rights of pregnant prisoners

In Labor and in Chains—it sounds like a '60s prison sexploitation flick. In fact, it's the title of a mini-documentary about the widespread practice in the United States of shackling female inmates while they're giving birth. But thanks largely to 39-yearold activist and DC power player Malika Saada Saar, an estimated 1,200 fewer women will be chained to their beds this year. The Senate Judiciary Committee forced the Bureau of Prisons to ban the practice after Saada Saar—who as a law student at Georgetown founded the Rebecca Project, a group devoted to reforming the justice system's treatment of women and children—managed to get a sit-down with Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois. When he heard what was going on, Durbin "dropped his head in disbelief," Saada Saar recalled to The Washington Post, then told his staff, "Whatever we have to do to end this practice, we have to do." A year later (breakneck pace for Washington), a regulation passed banning the procedure in federal prisons. With that kind of yank, maybe Obama should give her a call.